A Series of Falling Leaves
by Annwyd
Summary: Several brief ficlets based on the Naruto world, covering many different moods and ideas. Contains various pairings, indicated at the start of every chapter.
1. Sword

This chaptered fanfiction is actually a series of drabbles, ficlets, and flashfic that I've written for various prompts and purposes over my time in Naruto fandom. Style may vary, given the difference in when I wrote them. Pairings will definitely vary, but I will indicate each one at the start of each "chapter."

* * *

Pairing: Hayate/Yuugao. 

No prompt.

* * *

Before he left for the last time, he kissed her. He did it by taking her head in both hands and lowering his mouth to hers with the same polite, reserved precision he did everything. She leaned up to him, putting her hands on his shoulders and trying to slide her tongue between his lips. 

He turned away from her with the same tense grace he might deflect a thrown kunai. "Not now, Yuugao-san." He still called her that sometimes, even now, but she could not bring herself to be annoyed at it. The sheath of manners and titles made the sword of his self all the brighter when it emerged. "When I come back."

Later, she wished that a kiss were a solid thing like a sword, that could be preserved with proper care and taken off the shelf when she wanted to feel it against her skin again.


	2. Ramen

This is total crack, and rather racy at that, so beware. No pairings.

Prompt: the epic tale of the Ramen Prostitution Ring.

* * *

"That," Jiraiya told the young man who was once his student, "was a damned stupid thing for you to do. Of course, it was also _brilliant_."

"I know," Naruto said, tapping idly on the bars of his prison cell. "I mean, the stupid part, anyway. Sakura-chan explained that one to me pretty clearly. But what about the brilliant?" A beat. "Okay, so I don't know," he admitted.

Jiraiya blinked at him. "Okay, kid, let me explain this in small words. You--used your mouth--to make attractive waitresses at ramen shops across Fire Country--happy--_down there_. And in return, they gave you free ramen. You got cunnilingus--sometimes even _actual sex_ if they were feeling particularly horny at the time--_and_ free food. If you hadn't made the mistake of _bragging_ about it to that idiot Uchiha teammate of yours who _runs the police force_ here in Konoha--"

He paused. He looked at Naruto again.

"None of this is getting through to you, is it?"

"Most of the time," Naruto said, "I was thinking of ramen while I was getting the girls off."

Jiraiya thudded his head against the prison bars.  



	3. Dinner

Characters: Kakashi and Sasuke (can be read as a pairing if you want).  
Prompt: Dinner.

* * *

Kakashi set the soup bowl down in front of Sasuke. "Dinner," he said.

Sasuke did not look at the bowl. "Are Naruto and Sakura awake yet?"

Kakashi set down his own bowl of soup and started eating.

"When will they wake up?" Sasuke's voice was flat and limp, wrung out.

"The soup is a special recipe," Kakashi observed.

Sasuke shook his head. "It's an unpopular dish from Ichiraku. Will they wake up at all?"

But Kakashi said nothing, because the two of them had run out of words that meant anything. Instead, he reached out, took Sasuke's hand in his, and guided it to the spoon.


	4. After

Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura.  
Prompt: Our state of being.

* * *

_(this is us)_

Naruto stretches over the bed, belly down, fumbling off its side for the ramen he left there.

"Some people _smoke_ after sex, you know," Sasuke grumbles. He has his back to the others as he rubs (with not-so-well-hidden secret pleasure) at the bite marks on his shoulders. This one is too deep to belong to anyone but Naruto; this one might be Sakura's.

"This is healthier," Naruto says, retrieving the ramen.

"I wouldn't count on that," Sasuke says.

Sakura is sprawled between the two of them (and partly on top of Naruto), arms outstretched so that she rests a hand on each back. "You know," she says, "we're going to need a bigger bed."

"I like it this way," says Naruto  
.  
_(this is our state of being)_


	5. Antebellum

Pairing: Neji/Tenten. Can be read as platonic if you want.  
Prompt: Antebellum.

* * *

He was staring out over the battlefield when she found him, still and gravely beautiful despite the blood flecked on his arms.

Tenten spared the blood only a glance to determine that it was not his. "Neji," she said, "it's time to go back. Lee and Gai are waiting with what's left of Team 8."

He turned, but then he stopped. He wasn't quite looking at her--at least as far as she could tell. Not that it mattered, with his eyes. "Was it like this before the war?" he asked suddenly.

"What?" Tenten frowned at him. "You were there just as much as I was."

"Sometimes I don't know," he said.

She was silent for a moment. Then she said, "Maybe. There was always fighting. We're ninja, after all."

"But did the battlefields always extend farther than I could see?"

She looked down. "No," she said. "They didn't."  



	6. Clay

Pairing: Itachi/Sasuke (more hints than actual sex; can be read as platonic).  
Prompt: Clay.

* * *

There were days, towards the end (what was the end of the world for Sasuke, anyway), when Itachi would look at the soft lines of Sasuke's face, the perfect skin and gentle features, and be able to think of nothing but clay, waiting to be molded.

Those were the days when Itachi wanted to touch Sasuke, take his chin in two fingers and stroke it fiercely, as if that could make his features sharper and harder.

He refrained. Instead, he waited, and he prepared the night that would be the kiln, with their clan's blood the heat that would fire the soft clay of Sasuke's spirit.  



	7. Fuse

Characters: Team 7, with hints of Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura.  
Prompt: Fuse.

* * *

On the nights when it happens, Sakura is always the first to wake up after Sasuke leaves the bed. She pulls on Naruto's shoulder, sometimes gives him a smack or two to get him to wake up, and then they both get up and head out into the courtyard.

That's where Sasuke is. He sits there in the center of a flickering mass of candles, utterly silent and gravely still as he watches them all burn. He never tells his teammates how he gets the candles, or where. It's not like there's much else he's capable of keeping from them, these days.

Naruto stalks irritably over to him, arms folded across his chest. "This is so stupid," he complains. "We have perfectly good lights inside the house." But after some such pointless comment, he always flops down next to Sasuke, leaning on the other boy just a little, and soon enough the candlelight is reflecting in his eyes.

Sakura takes a little while longer to walk through the sea of tiny lights and settle down next to her teammates, but she always follows, all the same.

Sasuke never says why he does it, but Sakura has the feeling that on some nights, he just wants to pretend that the candlewicks are fuses burning down to a swift, untimely end.

Once he was a fuse burning down to a single end. That was simpler and easier than what he is now.

Orochimaru is dead by his hand and Itachi by another's, and Sasuke sits between his teammates and watches the candles burn down in quiet peace.  



	8. Goodwill

Pairing: Kabuto/Sasuke.  
Prompt: Goodwill.

* * *

At first Sasuke thinks the indulgent smiles Kabuto gives him are false goodwill gestures. They couldn't be anything more. The man doesn't even like him.

But after a while he starts to notice that there is something sly beneath those smiles. There's a curious glint in Kabuto's eyes sometimes. It feels almost invasive. Sasuke takes to glaring that glint into nonexistence whenever he gets the chance.

(Kabuto is amused by the show, but he is more than amused by Sasuke. There is something so profoundly broken about the boy. Kabuto has never seen someone like that before. Orochimaru-sama takes in the damaged and distorted from all across the land, but never has he appropriated someone so broken before.)

(Sasuke is a dagger with a chipped blade and a broken hilt that digs into the wielder's skin.)

(Sasuke is a jutsu whose name trips and falls on the user's tongue.)

(Sasuke is a poison that stings deliciously when it gets on one's fingers.)

(Sasuke is an explosive note with the letters smeared.)

(Kabuto has rarely found anything quite so attractive.)

When Sasuke shakes Kabuto's hand off his shoulder yet again, the spy smiles at him and says, "I just want you to feel--at home. Orochimaru-sama won't give you such kindness, you know."

(What he means is: I want to slide my fingers into your cracks and pry until you moan.) 


	9. Just

Pairing: Sasuke/Sakura.  
Prompt: Just.

* * *

The train steamed its way back from the far lands they'd reached to find their fleeing quarry. It would have been a fascinating journey, so alien and yet so familiar, but Sakura had matters of greater importance to attend to.

She stepped into the cargo car, pushed aside some baggage, and pulled open the trunk. "Morning, Sasuke-kun," she said. "It's my turn to bring you breakfast." She leaned down, undid the ropes binding his wrists, and pulled out his gag.

He knew better than to try to escape by now, but he glared at her as he took the strange food she offered.

Sakura sat and watched him eat.

"'Just' is a four-letter word," Sasuke said eventually. He was still glowering.

"What?"

"Justice is a lie just like anything else we were taught as children," he said. "Why are you going to such lengths to make me face justice for abandoning the Leaf?"

Sakura stared at him for a long moment. Then she laughed.

"It's not funny!"

"You _know_ that's not why we came for you," she said quietly.

He stopped then, and for a moment he didn't even glare. She tipped her head curiously, and he looked away from her gaze.

Was there a hint of a blush on his cheeks?

Sakura reached out, stroking two fingers along the perfect line of his jaw. He lifted his head slightly, trying not to tremble. "I promise you," she whispered, "so much more than justice waits for you at home."

He shut his eyes tightly.

So she straightened up. "All right, Sasuke-kun. Breakfast time is over. Let's get you back in the trunk." And she bent down once more to tie him up.  



	10. Rebellion

Pairing: Kakashi/Sasuke.  
Prompt: Rebellion. 

Warning for alternate universe.

* * *

The leader of the rebellion is a silver-haired man like none Sasuke has ever seen before. He is cool, competent, quiet, brilliant in a strange way--he is everything Sasuke wants to be.

And yet.

When Sasuke comes to deliver the news of the enemy forces regrouping mere miles away, the weariness on the self-appointed general's face is beyond comprehension.

Kakashi looks at him, standing there in the entrance of the tent. "Sasuke," he says, and somehow there is sympathy in his voice. It says _I know what you've been through_ even though Sasuke wants to resist, wants to say that nobody could know what he's been through, that nobody could understand why he had to join the rebellion.

But something about that hidden face teases him with understanding. "I have bad news," Sasuke says, and then he adds, "sir."

"It's always bad news," Kakashi says mildly.

He looks like he wants to simply sleep, and for some reason Sasuke wants to be there next to him when he does.


	11. Unsaid

Pairing: Ino/Sakura.  
Prompt: Unsaid.

* * *

Somehow, Ino always knew that it would be Sakura who survived Team 7, and that when the others were dead, she would not come back to Konoha.

Ino also always knew she would go after Sakura, then.

"Come back home," she said.

Sakura did not even turn to look at her.

Ino did not say, _Neither of us have a home anymore._

Instead she said, "Don't make me drag you, Sakura-chan."

Sakura turned, and she was almost smiling. She didn't say, _What is there for us to go back to?_ Instead she said, "You couldn't if you tried, Ino-pig."

Ino didn't say, _Then I'll stay the night at your side, the night and however long it takes._ She just grabbed Sakura and pulled her into her arms.


	12. Everything

Pairing: Kakashi/Sasuke.  
Prompt: With all your mind, with all your strength, with all your being.

* * *

Sometimes, Kakashi sees all of himself in Sasuke: his loss in the boy's eyes, his inadequacy in the way his shoulders tremble and try to slump though he refuses to let them, his loneliness in the tilt of his chin. Those are the times when Kakashi keeps his distances, tries to separate the two of them in space if not in self. But Sasuke is uncooperative; he draws closer as if trying to see what his sensei sees.

Sometimes, Kakashi sees nothing of himself in Sasuke, only a consuming, broken need that clears all else from his eyes, shudders new and strange in the set of his shoulders, wipes out humanity from the way he holds his head. Those are the times when Kakashi lets his own need get the better of himself, and he moves too close to the boy, perhaps even does what he should not and rests his hands on Sasuke's body somewhere to assure himself that it is still warm. But Sasuke will not have it this way. He moves away, as if to leave a space in which all they think and all they are lies suspended, unsure whether it will mix or flow away like oil and water.  



	13. Home

Character: Hinata. Hints of Naruto/Hinata if you squint.  
Prompt: Let there be peace in her gates, quietness in the hearts of her inhabitants.

* * *

As Hinata returns from the last battle of a war she never thought she'd be strong enough to fight in, she watches the shinobi around her retire from battle in their own ways.

The ANBU sheath their swords; some even take off their masks.

Tenten puts away her weapons, checks them and tucks them away one by one.

Lee puts his weights back on and retreats to Gai's side.

Sakura takes off her gloves and shrugs the monster strength out of her for now.

Kakashi pulls his hitai-ate back over the Sharingan eye.

Naruto, he lets the demonic light fade from his eyes, and once more he is so smiling and bright it makes her ache.

Hinata has nothing to put away, only hands stained with blood. That is the fate of the Hyuuga, to never be able to put down her weapons. They are in her very veins. She wonders if she can learn to live with that.

But then she walks back into the estate of the clan she will someday run, and she remembers the light in Naruto's fierce grin as he vowed to protect all of the Leaf. She understands, because around her the people of her clan are safe once again, and someday she will help them yet more.  



	14. Signs

Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura.  
Prompt: For the signs of your presence we encounter every day.

* * *

Sasuke wakes between the two of them in the morning, and he can still feel them on him. He still aches where Naruto's fingernails just barely broke the surface of his skin about his hips, and his lips still feel bruised from the way Sakura's pressed against them.

They are still asleep. It is his chance to escape, and he takes it gratefully. He rises from the bed with stealth befitting a trained ninja, he dresses, and he slips out the door. He has duties to attend to, duties which are easier on his heart than dealing with his teammates and lovers when they wake up at his side.

But even as he goes about his morning routine without them, he can almost feel them at his side, almost see them out of the corner of his eyes.

When Naruto and Sakura wake, they find him gone, but the bed between them still has his scent, and they can still almost feel his body between theirs. But for now he is vanished.

(These are the early days of their love; someday, perhaps, Sasuke will wake early in the morning, and he will wait for the other two to wake next to him, wait to kiss them again good morning.)

And yet he is not gone. Through the day they haunt each other. There is no mistaking the way Sasuke's gaze lights on fire when he catches sight of Naruto across the street, or the way his face softens when Sakura smiles at him. Others may miss it, but they can catch the signs.  



	15. Kept

Pairing: Sasuke/Hinata (can be read as platonic).  
Prompt: Keep my tongue from evil and my lips from deceit.

* * *

They did meet once, in the gardens of the Hyuuga estate, when they were old enough to understand that politics flowed over their heads like a rushing stream as their fathers met, but young enough to still stand beneath that stream, out of its reach.

Although they did not know the details, with the ears of children they could hear the intricacies of politics in their fathers' voices on the other side of the walls: in Hiashi's voice a cool white foam that covered all truth, wore it down until it was smoothly acceptable to the Hyuuga; in Fugaku's voice red curtains that covered the gathering darkness in their clan.

It was Hinata who held out her hand to Sasuke then, her pale eyes wide. "Let's never speak like that," she said.

"Huh?" Sasuke resisted the implications in her words.

"Let's not be ground down by the things that upset our clans," she said. "Let's be ourselves." And she smiled, hesitantly.

He took her hand. "All right," he said. "Let's do that."

But children's promises are sometimes forgotten. It would take Naruto to remind them both of this one.  



	16. Chase

Pairings: Ino/Sakura and Ino/Chouji.  
Prompt: Teach us then to find our happiness in the search.

* * *

These days, Sakura roams in Ino's dreams. She wears little (an idea that came to Ino's subconscious after seeing the way her newly-shorn hair brushed against the faint curves of her now mostly bare neck) and she smiles much.

In the dreams, Sakura is the one who comes to Ino. During the day, Ino chases her with smiles that are more smug and cocky than truly happy. Maybe that's because Sakura has a habit of catching those smiles, making them hers, without ever truly realizing it.

"You like it that way," Chouji observes after the fourth time Ino has failed to distract Sakura from her training one day. _His_ smile is rather too sly.

Perhaps, after she's given him a shove for intervening in her sacred chase, the smile Ino turns on him is a genuinely happy one.  



	17. Shadow

Pairings: Kakashi/Rin and Rin/Obito.  
Prompt: In the shadow that has fallen on their home.

* * *

Sometimes Kakashi thinks there is no light in the days, weeks, and months that follow Obito's death. But maybe it's just that he isn't looking for it--after all, their sensei tries, but he always turns away.

Rin does not try to shine in those days, though, and for that Kakashi is grateful. She merely takes him by the hand and leads him to secret places in the forests where they sit in peace, and after a few days there those places feel more like home than any place has since Kakashi left his father's house.

He is not surprised when she admits, "These clearings have always been like home to me," but he is a little regretful that he has stained them with his presence.

And yet she seems grateful that he is there--

--although her head turns sometimes to look at the empty space next to him, and her breath catches, and then her jaw tightens and her mouth thins.

When his eye hurts like misplaced fire in his head, she always brings him into the secret home in the woods, and there she tends to his pain, but sometimes when she attends to him with herbs and chakra both, her gaze slips, and she isn't seeing him anymore.

After a while, Kakashi understands that while sometimes he is not in the forests with Rin, she is never alone there. Perhaps she treasures most the times when it is only her and the ghost.  



	18. Fate

Pairing: Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura. Can be read as platonic.  
Prompt: Our destiny is not the same as anyone else's.

* * *

On the rare dark days when Tsunade refuses to teach because she has too many memories plaguing her that only the bottle can drown, Shizune studies Sakura with sad eyes. "When you take her place," she says once, "I hope you're more sensible."

Sakura turns away, her cheeks hot, and Shizune thinks it is from shame, but it is only because she can't express the depth of her anger.

When they stop in villages that know Jiraiya from exploits long past, the bartenders grin at Naruto, but a little sadly. "Someday, kid, someday you'll be the one making yourself feel better by leading some bright young boy through here," the most honest of them tells him.

That's the bar where they incur their highest tab yet, because Naruto breaks several rather expensive glasses altogether too close to the bartender's face.

Sometimes, when he is leaning too close with his hands on Sasuke's shoulders, Kabuto murmurs secret tales into his ears of how he might grow to be an even better overlord for the glory of Sound than Orochimaru ever was, if only he chooses wisely.

Sasuke reluctantly dismisses it with his usual, "I am far past choosing wisely," but beyond the cool resignation he is mildly surprised to find that a part of him still burns at this casual misappropriation of his destiny. He thought he'd long since become comfortable with his lack of a fate of his own.

It is only when he meets Naruto and Sakura alone on the field of battle, and they both have him pinned down and he has nowhere to look but their faces, no way of closing his eyes and looking away any longer, that he begins to understand what it was that burned within him then.  



	19. Vanity

Character: Tsunade as Hokage.  
Prompt: For they bow to vanity and emptiness.

* * *

The first time someone--a paper-pusher in one of Leaf's administrative buildings--tells Tsunade that they have faith in her as the Hokage, she gives them her old-woman's smirk, but accepts the compliment for what it is. They're naive. They don't know. Let the young have their delusions.

The second time someone--a low-level diplomat from Sand--tells Tsunade that they appreciate the work she is doing as Hokage, she gives them a skeptical look, but only says that she'll try to keep it up. This time, though, she wonders if she should tell them the truth.

But not long afterwards, she catches sight of herself reflected in the glass of a window as she has so many times before seen herself reflected in the glass of a bottle. She flashes herself a sardonic smile, and she knows then that it is just not her way to show people the truth. It is their business to see the pretty young Hokage with everything under control and protected, and hers to know the old woman beneath who could not protect her brother and her lover.  



	20. Deceived

Pairing: Sasuke/Sakura. Can be read as platonic.  
Prompt: Beware, lest your heart be deceived.

* * *

On her worst nights, when her muscles do not ache quite enough from training to distract her thoughts, Sakura lets herself think: what if he is gone forever? What if the boy who thanked her before he left is now gone, a ghost devoured by the shadows that have claimed his heart? What if he is now beyond their reach and beyond her love? She should not think this, but she does.

She sleeps, but the fear does not leave her.

On his worst nights, when the bruises and shallow scratches (no one dares cut him deep enough to scar) he acquires during training are not painful enough to keep him from thinking, Sasuke is gripped by a strange terror: what if they are happy without him? What if they are together now, content to let him rot so long as they have each other? He should not care about this, but he does.

He sleeps, but the fear does not leave him.  



	21. Addiction

Pairing: Sasuke/Sakura.  
Prompt: Addicted.

* * *

At one point, when the war escalated, Sound began taking prisoners and then returning them to Leaf, broken and drugged out of their minds. Even when they had their sanity stored, their minds still crawled with addiction. Kabuto was a clever one that way.

The Leaf was lucky to have Tsunade, Shizune, and now, Sakura. They devised cures--no, just treatments really--that would eventually erase the torture of need from their patients' corrupted minds.

Sakura knew she was doing a good thing, and it kept her busy, kept her awake instead of asleep and darkly dreaming of the friends and lovers she couldn't help--

--Naruto losing himself more and more to the demon within as he fought to protect the Leaf, Ino throwing herself into fights she had no business taking because on some days she was their last chance, Lee seeming to open another Gate on every new mission--

--Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke--

--Sasuke.

Sakura knew she was doing good, but sometimes at the end of the day she would sit on one of the few empty hospital beds, when there were any left at all, and she would look at a syringe full of the treatment for the addicted as Sasuke's face played through her mind, as she imagined what he would taste like on her mouth.

Then she got up and put the needle and the medicine away for another night.  



	22. Symbol

Pairing: Anko/Iruka.  
Prompt: Bind them as a sign upon your hand; let them be a symbol before your eyes.

* * *

Although they have exchanged few words, Iruka cannot help but watch Anko sometimes. She is so different from the life he is used to and the person he is, and yet--

--and yet for all her eccentricity, there is a strength in her that draws him to her.

He passes her at one of the shops he goes to for lunch sometimes, and he sees her tearing into her meal with swift hands and flashing teeth, and she is like an animal, except she knows how to control herself.

He sees her stalk through the halls sometimes, and there is a darkness in her eyes, but she keeps it there, at her beck and call.

She holds her demons before her like signs (like the seal branded into her neck), controlled but not tame, and that is at once utterly alien and enormously appealing.

His only mistake is to assume he can watch her from afar. If she does not let her own demons out of her grasp, why would she let him go free?

He finds her on his desk one morning, her lips smiling and her eyes narrowed. "How much of me have you seen," she asks, "and how much more do you want to see?"

He has a feeling she will be the one to answer that question for him.  



	23. Song

Character: Sasuke. Some Team 7.  
Prompt: A new song the redeemed sang to your name.

* * *

In the end, Sasuke still thinks of his family, the dead one.

(It's not the end, really; it's only the beginning, and that's what's so frightening about it.)

He uses Katon jutsu to light candles while Naruto scoffs at him for it (but looks on with hopeful eyes), then dedicates them to his parents' name.

In the warm darkness, he confesses to Sakura that he wishes he could sing, so he could perform songs in their memory, grave and poetic.

But she looks at him with that gentle smile he knows so well in her eyes, and they both know that if he could sing, there are better things than old grief to motivate him to it these days.

If he ever forgets, she and Naruto and Kakashi will remind him again, and perhaps they will all sing together.  



	24. Debt

Characters: Kakashi and Sasuke  
Prompt: The dead have come to claim a debt from thee.

* * *

"Did you think this would accomplish anything?" Kakashi asks Sasuke.

The boy is almost expressionless. Most would think him totally blank. But Kakashi knows the slight narrowing of those eyes, the tension in his mouth; he knows the bitterness mixed with fear there. He knows that if Sasuke could, he'd flee to be alone and not have to deal with his old teacher's sharp gaze.

Right now, though, he's too busy lying on his hospital bed, tubes twined into his arms. His attempt to sacrifice himself for Naruto would have left him dead if not for Sakura's frenzy of healing, and he still has a way to go before he can walk again, much less run from Kakashi.

"Maybe," he says, "if they'd have just let me go." He lifts his gaze up to Kakashi. "They don't understand," he says impatiently. "I have to pay off the ghosts."

He talks about the ghosts often, since his brush with death. The medics thought at first that he was delirious; it was Kakashi who knew to convince them otherwise.

"Do _you_ understand that you owe something to the living now?" Kakashi asks.\

But this time, Sasuke meets his gaze. "Do you?"

Kakashi has no answer. 


	25. School

Characters: Kakashi and Sasuke  
Prompt: High school AU.

* * *

"You didn't make me stay after class about that idiot girl's stupid lie, did you?" Sasuke does not look Kakashi in the eye as he gathers up his books.

"Sasuke," Kakashi says, his tone not changing, "is it true? Did you pull Sakura's hair?"

Sasuke rolls his eyes and slings his backpack over one shoulder, then the next--he is neater than the other students and never carries it sloppily. "Fifth-graders pull girls' hair when they have a crush. I'm a freshman in high school and I can't stand--I don't give a--I don't _care_ about Sakura Haruno."

"You didn't answer my question," Kakashi says. He picks a piece of paper off his desk and studies it for a moment. Then he says, "Your IEP says your social skills are at a fifth grade lev--"

Sasuke rears up abruptly, his backpack slipping down on his arms. "How did you get a hold of--" He lunges for the paper, snatching it out of Kakashi's hands.

It's a memorandum on the dress code. He stares at it for a moment, then lets it flutter to the floor. In front of him, Kakashi chuckles. 


	26. Guessing

Pairing: Kakashi/Sasuke  
No prompt.

* * *

For Naruto and Sakura, guessing when and where Kakashi will appear at the start of each lesson is a game. They squabble over it, make cheerful bets and then back away from paying them off. (With some exceptions: "Hey, hey, Sakura-chaaan! If I'm right this time, will you go on a date with me?" "No!")

For Sasuke it is different (as everything is different; he cannot play with normal children, or even with those _pretending_ to be normal children like Naruto or who _think_ that they're normal children like Sakura, because the intertwined gifts of normalcy and sanity have been stripped away from him, leaving him bare and brittle like a tree in winter).

He keeps his guesses to himself, like hoarded treasures, like a coin held warm and secret against his skin. Every time he is nearer to right, he comes closer to tugging that mask off in some fashion--

--and sometimes he thinks of doing that literally, and he wonders what he would do afterwards. Perhaps he would kiss Kakashi, and maybe then, the next time (the next time what?), he would know for sure. He would understand. 


	27. Sparring

Characters: Kakashi and Sasuke  
No prompt.

* * *

When Sasuke finally enters the ANBU, he spars only with Kakashi. Mo one else will risk going up against him, sword to sword--he has worked for six strange and turbulent years now in Leaf's service, but stigma still trails from him like ribbons. He accepts it, because there is no one with whom he would rather spar.

When his sword flashes through the air, with only Kakashi's weapon there to counter it, it is as if the two of them are slicing the lies from him. His world narrows, and in that perfect silver blur he knows many things that he barely dares to admit any other time--

--Kakashi is better than him, unconquerable. Sasuke has become stronger than him, true, but there are ways in which his teacher will always be better, always be the one in charge. He strains against this truth like he might bite down on a sore tooth. In time the pain becomes an intoxicating comfort.

--he needs someone else's sword to block his, to send it spinning with a sharp clash. Naruto and Sakura will tear at him with their claws and their love, and he needs that too, but they will not, cannot, stay his sword and say, "This is where you stop."

--in some places he is still broken, nigh unfixable, but _that is all right_, because Kakashi is broken too.


End file.
